Bedtime Tale: Walden, Chapter 1 Part 1

Enjoy this bedtime tale to help you drift off into a peaceful slumber. Tonight we read, Walden: Ch 1 Part 1, by Henry David Thoreau. Chapter One, Economy, describes Thoreau's embarking on a 2-year stay in the woods of Massachusetts by the Walden Pond.

This audio is perfect for children or adults who want to relax, discover magic, or find adventure before a great night's sleep.

Transcript

Walden by Henry David Thoreau Chapter 1 Part 1 Economy When I wrote the following pages,

Or rather the bulk of them,

I lived alone,

In the woods,

A mile from any neighbor,

In a house which I had built myself,

On the shore of Walden Pond in Concord,

Massachusetts,

And earned my living by the labor of my hands only.

I lived there two years and two months.

At present I am a sojourner in civilized life again.

I should not obtrude my affairs so much on the notice of my readers if very particular inquiries had not been made by my townsmen concerning my mode of life,

Which some would call impertinent,

Though they do not appear to me at all impertinent,

But,

Considering the circumstances,

Very natural and pertinent.

Some have asked what I got to eat,

If I did not feel lonesome,

If I was not afraid,

And the like.

Others have been curious to learn what portion of my income I devoted to charitable purposes,

And some,

Who have large families,

How many poor children I maintained.

I will,

Therefore,

Ask those of my readers who feel no particular interest in me to pardon me if I undertake to answer some of those questions in this book.

In most books,

The I,

Or first person,

Is omitted.

In this it will be retained that in respect to egotism is the main difference.

We commonly do not remember that it is,

After all,

Always the first person that is speaking.

I should not talk so much about myself if there were anybody else whom I knew as well.

Unfortunately,

I am confined to this theme by the narrowness of my experience.

Moreover,

I,

On my side,

Require of every writer,

First or last,

A simple and sincere account of his own life,

And not merely what he has heard of other men's lives,

Some such account as he would send to his kindred from a distant land,

For if he has lived sincerely,

It must have been in a distant land to me.

Perhaps these pages are more particularly addressed to poor students,

As for the rest of my readers,

They will accept such portions as apply to them.

I trust that no one will stretch the seams in putting on the coat,

For it may do good service to him whom it fits.

I would fay say something,

Not so much concerning the Chinese and sandwich islanders,

As you who read these pages,

Who are said to live in New England,

Something about your condition,

Especially your outward condition or circumstances in the world.

In this town,

What it is,

Whether it is necessary that it be as bad as it is,

Whether it cannot be improved,

As well as not,

I have travelled a good deal in Concord,

And everywhere,

In shops and offices and fields,

The inhabitants have appeared to me to do penance in a thousand remarkable ways.

What I have heard of Brahmins sitting exposed to four fires,

And looking in the face of the sun,

Or hanging suspended with their heads downwards over flames,

Or looking at the heavens over their shoulders,

Until it becomes impossible for them to resume their natural position,

While from the twist of the neck nothing but liquids can pass into the stomach,

Or dwelling,

Chained for life,

At the foot of a tree,

Or measuring with their bodies,

Like caterpillars,

The breadth of vast empires,

Or standing on one leg on the tops of pillars,

Even these forms of conscious penance are hardly more incredible and astonishing than the scenes which I daily witness.

The twelve labours of Hercules were trifling in comparison with those which my neighbours have undertaken,

For they were only twelve,

And had an end,

But I could never see that these men slew,

Or captured any monster,

Or finished any labour.

They have no friend Iolas to burn with the hot iron,

The root of the hydra's head,

But as soon as one head is crushed,

Two spring up.

I see young men,

My townsmen,

Whose misfortune it is to have inherited farms,

Houses,

Barns,

Cattle,

And farming tools,

For these are more easily acquired than got rid of,

Better if they had been born to the open pasture and suckled by a wolf,

That they might have seen with clearer eyes what field they were called to labour in.

Who made them serfs of the soil?

Why should they eat their sixty acres,

When men is condemned to eat only his peck of dirt?

Why should they begin digging their graves as soon as they are born?

They have got to live a man's life,

Pushing all these things before them,

And get on as well as they can.

How many a poor immortal soul have I met,

Well nigh crushed and smothered under its load,

Creeping down the road of life,

Pushing before it a barn seventy-five feet by forty,

Its stables never cleansed,

And one hundred acres of land,

Tillage,

Mowing,

Pasture,

And woodlot?

The portionless,

Who struggle with no necessary inherited encumbrances,

Find it labour enough to subdue and cultivate a few cubic feet of flesh.

But men labour under a mistake.

The better part of the man is soon ploughed into the soil for compost,

By a seeming fate commonly called necessity.

They are employed,

As it says in an old book,

Laying up treasures which moth and rust will corrupt,

And thieves break through and steal.

It is a fool's life,

As they will find when they get to the end of it,

If not before.

It is said that Deucalion and Pyrrha created men by throwing stones over their heads behind them.

Indigenis durum sumus,

Experiesque laburum,

Et documenta,

Damus que simus,

Origini nadi.

Or,

As Raleigh rhymes it on his own sonorous way,

From thence our kind hearted is,

Enduring pain and care,

Approving that our bodies of a stony nature are.

So much for a blind obedience to the blundering oracle,

Throwing the stones over their heads behind them,

And not seeing where they fell.

Most men,

Even in this comparatively free country,

Through mere ignorance and mistake,

Are so occupied with the fictitious cares and superfluously coarse labors of life that its finer fruits cannot be plucked by them.

Their fingers,

From excessive toil,

Are too clumsy and tremble too much for that.

Actually,

The laboring man has not leisure for a true integrity day by day.

He cannot afford to sustain the manliest relations to men.

His labor would be depreciated in the market.

He has no time to be anything but a machine.

How can he remember well his ignorance,

Which his growth requires,

Who is so often to use his knowledge?

We should feed and clothe him gratuitously sometimes,

And recruit him with our cordials before we judge of him.

The finest qualities of our nature,

Like the bloom on fruits,

Can be preserved only by the most delicate handling.

Yet we do not treat ourselves nor one another thus tenderly.

Some of you,

We all know,

Are poor,

Find it hard to live,

Are sometimes,

As it were,

Gasping for breath.

I have no doubt that some of you who read this book are unable to pay for all the dinners which you have actually eaten,

Or for the coats and shoes which are fast-wearing or are already worn out,

And have come to this page to spend borrowed or stolen time,

Robbing your creditors of an hour.

It is very evident what mean and sneaky lives many of you live,

For my sight has been whetted by experience,

Always on the limits,

Trying to get into business and trying to get out of debt.

A very ancient slow,

Called by the Latins,

Another's brass,

For some of their coins were made of brass,

Still living and dying,

And buried by this other's brass,

Always promising to pay,

Promising to pay,

Tomorrow and dying today,

Insolvent,

Seeking to curry favor,

To get custom,

By how many modes,

Only not state prison offenses,

Lying,

Flattering,

Voting,

Contracting yourselves into a nutshell of civility,

Or dilating into an atmosphere of thin and vaporous generosity,

That you may persuade your neighbor to let you make his shoes,

Or his hat,

Or his coat,

Or his carriage,

Or import his groceries for him,

Making yourselves sick,

That you may lay up something against a sick day,

Something to be tucked away in an old chest,

Or in a stocking behind the plastering,

Or more safely,

In the brick bank,

No matter where,

No matter how much,

Or how little.

I sometimes wonder that we can be so frivolous,

I may almost say,

As to attend to the gross but somewhat foreign form of servitude called Negro slavery.

There are so many keen and subtle masters that enslave both North and South.

It is hard to have a Southern overseer,

It is worse to have a Northern one,

But worst of all,

When you are the slave driver of yourself,

Talk of a divinity in man.

Look at the teamster on the highway,

Wending to market by day or night.

Does any divinity stir within him?

His highest duty to fodder and water his horses.

What is his destiny to him compared with this shipping interest?

Does not he drive,

For squire,

Make a stir?

How godlike,

How immortal is he!

See how he cowers and sneaks,

How vaguely all the day he fears,

Not being immortal nor divine,

But the slave and prisoner of his own opinion of himself,

A fame won by his own deeds.

Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion.

What a man thinks of himself,

That it is which determines,

Or rather indicates,

His fate.

Self-emancipation,

Even in the West Indian provinces of the fancy and imagination.

What Wilberforce is there to bring that about?

Think also of the ladies of the land weaving toilet cushions against the last day,

Not to betray too green an interest in their fates.

As if you could kill time without injuring eternity.

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.

What is called resignation is confirmed desperation.

From the desperate city you go into the desperate country and have to console yourself with the bravery of minks and muskrats.

A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind.

There is no play in them,

For this comes after work,

But it is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.

When we consider what,

To use the words of the catechism,

Is the chief end of man,

And what are the true necessaries and means of life,

It appears as if men had deliberately chosen the common mode of living because they preferred it to any other.

Yet they honestly think there is no choice left.

But alert and healthy natures remember that the sun rose clear.

It is never too late to give up our prejudices.

No way of thinking or doing,

However ancient,

Can be trusted without proof.

What everybody echoes o'er in silence passes by,

As true today may turn out to be falsehood tomorrow.

Mere smoke of opinion,

Which some had trusted for a cloud that would sprinkle fertilizing rain on their fields.

What old people say you cannot do,

You try and find out that you can.

Old deeds for old people and new deeds for new.

Old people did not know enough once per chance to fetch fresh fuel to keep the fire a-going.

New people put a little dry wood under a pot and are whirled round the globe with its speed of birds,

In a way to kill old people,

As the phrase is.

Age is no better,

Hardly so well,

Qualified for an instructor as youth,

For it has not profited so much as it has lost.

One may almost doubt if the wisest man has learned anything of absolute value by living.

Practically,

The old have no important advice to give the young,

Their own experience has been so partial,

And their lives have been such miserable failures for private reasons,

As they must believe,

And it may be that they have some faith left which belies that experience,

And they are only less young than they were.

I have lived some thirty years on this planet,

And have yet to hear the first syllable of valuable or even earnest advice from my seniors.

They have told me nothing,

And probably cannot tell me anything,

To the purpose.

Here is life,

An experiment to a great extent untried by me,

But it does not avail me that they have tried it.

If I have any experience which I think valuable,

I am sure to reflect that this my mentors said nothing about.

One farmer says to me,

You cannot live on vegetable food solely,

For it furnishes nothing to make bones with,

And so he religiously devotes a part of his day to supplying his system with the raw material of bones,

Walking all the while,

While he talks about his oxen,

Which,

With vegetable-made bones,

Jerk him in his lumbering plow,

Along in spite of every obstacle.

Some things are really necessaries of life,

In some circles,

The most helpless and diseased,

Which in others are luxuries merely,

And in others still are entirely unknown.

The whole ground of human life seems to some to have been gone over by their predecessors,

Both the heights and the valleys,

And all things to have been cared for.

According to Evelyn,

The wise Solomon prescribed ordinances for the very distances of trees,

And the Roman praetors have decided how often you may go into the neighbor's land to gather the acorns which fall on it without trespass,

And what share belongs to that neighbor.

Hippocrates has even left directions how we should cut our nails,

That is,

Even with the ends of the fingers neither shorter nor longer.

Undoubtedly,

The very tedium and ennui which presume to have exhausted the variety and the joys of life are as old as Adam,

But man's capacities have never been measured,

Nor are we to judge of what he can do by any precedence,

So little has been tried.

Whatever have been the failures hitherto,

Be not afflicted,

My child,

For who shall assign to thee what thou hast left undone?

We might try our lives by a thousand simple tests,

As,

For instance,

That the same sun which ripens my beans illumines at once a system of earths like ours.

If I had remembered this,

It would have prevented some mistakes.

This was not the light in which I hold them.

The stars are the apexes of what wonderful triangles,

What distant and different beings in the various mansions of the universe are contemplating the same one at the same moment.

Nature and human life are as various as our several constitutions.

Who shall say what prospect life offers to another?

Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each other's eyes for an instant?

We should live in all the ages of the world in an hour.

I,

In all the worlds of the ages,

History,

Poetry,

Mythology,

I know of no reading of another's experience so startling and informing as this would be.

The greater part of what my neighbors call good,

I believe in my soul to be bad.

And if I repent of anything,

It is very likely to be my good behavior.

What demon possessed me that I behave so well?

You may say the wisest thing you can,

Old man,

You who have lived seventy years,

Not without honor of a kind.

I hear an irresistible voice which invites me away from all that.

One generation abandons the enterprises of another like stranded vessels.

I think that we may safely trust a good deal more than we do.

We may waive just so much care of ourselves as we honestly bestow elsewhere.

Nature is as well adapted to our weakness as to our strength.

The incessant anxiety and strain of some is a well-nigh incurable form of disease.

We are made to exaggerate the importance of what work we do,

And yet how much is not done by us?

Or what if we had taken sick?

How vigilant we are,

Determined not to live by faith if we can avoid it.

All the day long on the alert.

At night we unwillingly say our prayers and commit ourselves to uncertainties.

So thoroughly and sincerely are we compelled to live.

Reverencing our life and denying the possibility of change.

This is the only way,

We say,

But there are as many ways as there can be drawn radii from one center.

All change is a miracle to contemplate,

But it is a miracle which is taking place every instant.

Confucius said,

To know that we know what we know,

And that we do not know what we do not know,

That is true knowledge.

When one man has reduced a fact of the imagination to be a fact of his understanding,

I foresee that all men at length establish their lives on that basis.

And that is the end of our story this evening.

Until next time,

Sweet dreams.

Reviews

TY
I've always wondered what was in that book... Beautiful

Lovely! Looking forward to listening to this. Thank you! 💕